


Rosetta

by ExuberantOcean



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Dissociation, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:34:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28793241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExuberantOcean/pseuds/ExuberantOcean
Summary: Hawkeye returns to Crabapple Cove, but not.
Relationships: Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce & Daniel Pierce
Comments: 9
Kudos: 29





	Rosetta

The closer the bus gets to Crabapple Cove, the more distant, the more flat the world around him appears. Hawkeye rubs the window with his arm, but it doesn’t change a thing. A town more familiar to him than anything seems foreign to him now, though little seems to have changed. And so it’s a surprise to him when the bus lurches to a stop in front of a small crowd of smiling faces.

“Pierce, it’s your stop!”

Hawkeye blinks, shakes himself a little in a futile attempt to bring his sense more online, stands and mechanically grabs his drab olive military bag. It’s weight grounds him just that little bit that he needs to walk forward through the bus half filled with military draftees returning from the war.

“Hey Pierce,” says the driver, an old man who must have been in the army since the civil war, as far as Hawkeye could figure. “It’ll take some time, but it’ll work out.”

Hawkeye blinks at him stupidly, uncertain what to say. He’s even less certain how to handle the salute the man gives him, so he turns wordlessly and stumbles off of the bus into the blinding light of a sunny day and into a crowd that feels much larger than it really is.

There's a cheer, hands touching, faces split with smiles but it all seems to be happening somewhere else, like his reality has warped into one of those movies they used to show in the mess tent. The noise starts to quiet down.

“Son, are you okay?” His father’s voice comes over. His father’s face is frowning. 

Hawkeye blinks a few times, as if that would get reality back into focus. He realizes he’s supposed to be saying something then hears himself cracking some kind of joke.

There's a short burst of laughter, then someone volunteers: “You must be tired.”

Yes, he must be. He hasn’t slept since Korea. That must be it. He tells them all. Sounds of sympathy play on the soundtrack as the number of faces starts to dwindle. Then, suddenly, he’s at his father’s house-his house. Little has changed. It all looks so different.

He follows his dad up to his bedroom, nodding at the pauses in conversation, until his father leaves him on a bed that should feel like his with its well worn but warm blankets. 

He falls asleep with his shoes on.

He wakes up confused, listening to himself raving about needing to help Tommy. The words start to die on his lips as his dad’s face comes into focus. He looks around trying to determine where he is.

“Son, you’re in the kitchen. You’re at home. You’re safe. You were just dreaming.”

But he wasn’t, was he? At least, it might have been a dream, but it was real too. Tommy’s gone, slipped through his fingers. Exited this realm with nary a goodbye. He looks around wildly, trying to find something that feels real. Real as the announcement of incoming, real as the sound of the choppers, the olive of the tents, the smell of a punctured intestine. As real as...as real as his boots. He stares down at them, the dirt of Korea still clinging. What were they doing on a tiled floor?

He lets his dad lead him back to bed.

When they say you can’t go home again, Hawkeye didn’t ever think they meant it like this. He spends the whole next day stumbling through his past life like a ghost, haunting rooms that feel far away and nodding to faces that feel like faint echoes. He keeps finding himself waiting for the sound of the choppers coming over the ridge and finds that it doesn’t make him tense. Shouldn’t it make him tense? He hated the war, hated every minute of it. What kind of sick man would look forward to the sound of choppers with their loads of human suffering? When he closes his eyes he can almost hear them and it feels more real than anything around him now.

He blinks and sighs and tells his father he’s tired. 

Of course, his father says. Jet lag his father says. Wonder what time it is in Korea right now, ponders his father. Time doesn’t matter as much as the ebb and tide of wounded, but Hawkeye doesn’t say this. He doesn’t say much of anything. He goes to bed.

It takes a bit longer to wake this time, but when he does he’s talking to Radar in a clipped frantic voice. Friendly fire and it’s too close. You need to get through to…. You need to get through…. His voice trails off and he can’t recognize where he is, but his father’s talking to him. He’s saying something. He knows because he can see his mouth moving.

Suddenly Hawkeye misses Radar so much it literally takes his breath. The kid always knew what you needed before you did. Hawkeye has no clue what he needs.

It’s only after his dad envelopes him in a hug that he realizes he was still talking. His dad says some things, and he listens, he really does, but the meaning of the words seem to evaporate on impact. After a bit his father leads him back up the stairs and into his room. It doesn’t matter what time it is. He goes back to sleep with his boots on.

***

Reality fails to solidify but Hawkeye slowly gets better at going through the motions. He makes small talk with friends, navigates around his town, fishes with his dad on a bright day, but all continues to feel strange, distant. He wants to rave, or laugh, or cry, or go insane or anything but this heavy ball of numbness in his gut...it’s all he’s got. It numbs his tongue and dulls his senses.

“How are you feeling?” the people ask. He’s got no answers. 

He misses them all-Trapper, Henry, Margaret, Charles, BJ, Radar, Klinger, Potter, hell even Burns-he never wants to see them again.

I’m adjusting, he’d lie and change the topic.

One day he finds himself alone. He’s not sure where his father went or even when his father went. “I have a father, you have a dad.” Charles once told him. He had a dad, but now he has a father and he doesn’t know how to fix the distance. He knows it’s his fault; he can’t seem to find his way back to the world he left behind when he was drafted. 

What he is missing, Hawkeye realizes, is a Rosetta stone. Something to translate his life in Crabapple Cove into Korean...or maybe Korea into Crabapple Covese? It’s a brilliant idea, if he does say so himself. Excitedly he tells his father, who he knows isn’t currently there but it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter, he tells dad his plan anyway. His excited voice echoing back into his own ears, amplified and loud and real. He starts tearing apart the place, looking for his Rosetta Stone.

***

Dr. Daniel Pierce steels himself at the front door of the small colonial he calls home. He had gone to the bakery in town to pick up a couple of his son’s favorite donuts, apple cider, after yet another morning of watching him wander about the house aimlessly with that damned dazed look on his face. It had been nearly a week now since he came home and Hawkeye barely ate, rarely talked, scantily slept and had yet to take off his boots, as far as Daniel could tell. 

When his boy was truly jus ta boy, the two had gone to the bakery every Sunday since it had opened, nearly two years after his mother had died. It was Sunday now and Daniel hoped the familiar custom would bring that spark back within his son that’s been missing since Korea. A way to breach the chasm between them and ground him back in Crabapple Cove. God knows nothing else seemed to work.

In all honesty, Hawkeye’s behavior-his blankness-scares him. 

Daniel had never been an overly religious man and stopped attending church altogether after his wife died, but nevertheless, he says a little prayer before opening the door.

He is not prepared for the mess he finds inside. 

The hall is a disaster: the coats are all flung on the floor, the side table had been knocked over and its drawers emptied, and a couple of overturned chairs from the dining room have been flung into it. Taking a step forward he looks to his right and sees the living room is worse: the cushions are scattered off the couches, books flung off the shelves and tossed into hapless piles, the floor is carpeted in paperwork. To the left he can see the dining room in a similar state. It was like a tornado tore through his home, throwing everything apart in its wake. And it is eerily silent.

“Hawkeye!” Daniel yells as he makes for the stairs before him.

“Dad!” Hawkeye responds immediately, stampeding down them and stopping just short of crashing into him. “I’ve found the letters!” 

“Son?” 

“The letters, you know the letters!” Hawkeye shakes the half opened box at his dad, letters falling out. He swoops down to pick them up. He’s so excited he’s vibrating, a dramatic contrast to the listless creature Dr. Pierce left behind a half an hour ago. “My letters, your letters, the letters. The letters!”

“From Korea,” Daniel says as he takes them, having little choice since Hawkeye is thrusting them into his hands, forcing him to quickly juggle them with the bag of donuts. “Yes, I saved all your letters from Korea.”

“Yes! Yes! I want you to read them!” Hawkeye starts for the living room, then turns and urges his dad, “Come on, the letters! You have to read the letters to me!”

“Why would you-” his dad stops himself. This has been more genuine emotion than his son has shown all week. He shouldn’t question it. So he follows his son into the wreck of their living room. Hawkeye replaces the cushions and pillows on the couch and throws himself on it, kicking off his boots.

“We need to read them in order,” Hawkeye declares, grabbing the box back out of his dad’s hands and dumping it upside down, so the oldest letters are now on top. “You need to read them in order! You read them to me.” Hawkeye shoves the first letter into his dad’s hands. “Come on, come on!”

Hawkeye squeezes in close to his dad who starts to read the first letter his son wrote him. At its conclusion Hawkeye quickly shoves the second one at him. By the end of the third, Hawkeye starts to add commentary; telling him more details about the events, additional stories, or random observations about life during the war. By the time they get to Tommy’s death, Hawkeye’s holding onto the sleeve of his shirt, fiddling with the cuff like he did all so often when he was young, after his mother’s death, but Hawkeye refuses to let him stop reading.

The sun comes strong through the windows, warming Hawkeye and invoking a drowsiness despite the brightness. He reaches out and finds a throw pillow, and presses it against his dad, then leans against him, just like he has so many times with BJ over the war, after long gruelling hours surgery. They haven’t gotten to BJ quite yet, but they should be there soon.

“Keep going,” Hawkeye insists when he hears his father trailing off. 

“Are you sure?” Dad answers back, Hawkeye feeling his voice through the pillow, despite its softness. “Because the next one is…”

“Yes,” Hawkeye says. “Yes, yes, yes.”

So onward they go. Hawkeye traces the pattern in the couch cushions through Henry’s death, feeling the worn softness of the cloth under his fingers. He feels his father’s voice rumble against him as he reads of Trapper’s departure and BJ’s arrival. Eats through both apple cidar donuts that taste just like his childhood while they drive to aid stations together or laugh at the steady stream of pranks. The sunlight fades as the wind off the coast picks up causing the trees around their house to rustle and it starts to lull Hawkeye’s eyes closed.

When he awakens in the morning it’s to his dad looking down at him warmly. “Welcome home, son.”


End file.
